Report: FBI has doubled counterterrorism forces

By
Jeff Stein

The FBI has doubled the deployment of agents assigned to counterterrorism issues since the 2001 terror attacks, the Justice Department reported today.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported that in fiscal 2009 "the FBI used 26 percent of its field agents to address counterterrorism matters, while using 51 percent to address criminal matters."

"This is a significant change from FY 2001 when the FBI used 13 percent of its field agents on counterterrorism matters and 72 percent on criminal matters," Fine said.

Fiscal year 2001 began in October 2000.

The FBI said its top priority before the Sept. 11 attacks was counterterrorism, but the DoJ IG regularly faulted the bureau in subsequent years for "not adequately assessing or using performance data to allocate resources and to evaluate the effects" of shifting its personnel into counterterrorism.

In the past five years, however, the FBI "has improved its ability to monitor and evaluate its allocation and utilization of resources, the IG said.

But the FBI continues to have problems finding and keeping intelligence analysts, losing 6 percent to 12 percent a year, the inspector general said.

“FBI officials stated the rate of attrition and time it takes to hire applicants affected the FBI’s ability to fill vacant intelligence analyst positions,” Fine reported.

I hope most of the new FBI agents will be assigned to keep close watch on our home-grown, tea-baggin' terrorists who are trying to intimidate Americans with their show of weapons, bricks through windows and violent rhetoric.

'Baggers shout for the overthrow of our government, practically in every breath. It's great that the FBI may now be taking them literally.

Yes, JC505, this is, indeed, great. It is a deep frustration, however, to realize that the new agents will be needed to monitor our own homegrown terrorists during a time when we need as many resources as possible to obstruct the foreign ones.
The next time Teabaggers and all Republicans complain about how much money is being spent, I would remind them that a significant amount of all our money is being spent on trying to prevent them from inciting the murder of our public officials.

Wasn't the problem with 911 that the FBI (and others) didn't use what assets they had well enough, rather than that they didn't have enough assets? If you double the number of people working a problem but don't fix the things that prevent their work from being effective, how does that help?